Coming Soon: OMG! Dinner & a Movie is Back!

Cover your eyes. Close your ears. Or better yet, keep an open mind and humor us. Go with the flow — we’re going to have a little fun with this one.

Acclaimed Danish Director Lars von Trier (Melancholia, Dancer in the Dark) is probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark in the late 20th century. Once again, he is stunning audiences with NYMPHOMANIAC and its cast including Stellan Skarsgård (in his sixth von Trier film), Shia LaBeouf, Willem Dafoe, Jamie Bell, Christian Slater and Uma Thurman. In early December 2013, the full four-hour feature was shown to the press in a private preview session. For its public release in the UK, Nymphomaniac was divided into two volumes—Volume I and Volume II—and the film’s UK premiere was on February 22. In response to claims that he has merely created a “porn film”, male lead Skarsgård stated: “… if you look at this film, it’s actually a really bad porn movie, even if you fast forward. And after a while you find you don’t even react to the explicit scenes. They become as natural as seeing someone eating a bowl of cereal.”

We have plenty more than cereal for dinner when OMG! Dinner & a Movie, our longtime series with Wynwood’s O Cinema, returns for the first time in 2014 on Wednesday, March 19. Harry’s Pizzeria chef de cuisine Steven Martin and TGHG executive pastry chef Hedy Goldsmith have put together an inspired menu, sure to satisfy your appetite:

For our upcoming OMG!, we offer VOLUME I, the story of Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac who is discovered badly beaten in an alley by an older bachelor, Seligman (Stellan Skarsgård), who takes her into his home. As he tends to her wounds, she recounts the erotic story of her adolescence and young-adulthood (portrayed in flashback by newcomer Stacy Martin).

Von Trier is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective – an avant-garde filmmaking movement started in 1995 with fellow Danish director Thomas Vinterberg. The “Dogme 95 Manifesto” and the “Vow of Chastity” (Danish: kyskhedsløfter) were rules to create filmmaking based on the traditional values of story, acting, and theme, and excluding the use of elaborate special effects or technology. Since the late 2000s, the emergence of video technology in DSLR photography cameras, such as the Canon EOS 550D, has resulted in a tremendous surge of both feature and short films shot with most, if not all, of the rules pertaining to the Dogme 95 manifesto. However, because of advancements in technology and quality, the aesthetic of these productions typically appears drastically different than that of the Dogme films shot on Tape or DVD-R Camcorders. Largely erasing the primitive and problematic features of past technologies, newer technologies have helped Dogme 95 filmmakers achieve an aesthetic of higher resolution, as well as of lower contrast, film grain, and saturation. You may be also interested in the documentary film Side by Side, available on Netflix, that addresses this technical debate in modern day cinema on the use of film vs. digital in movie-making amongst directors, editors, actors and cinematographers. I think it should prove an interesting primer, as well as provide another layer of context for Von Trier’s latest work.

O Cinema is located at 90 NW 29th Street Miami, FL 33127 (305) 571-9970, ample parking, easy access. Doors open at at 6:30 p.m. to our buffet menu, concessions offers beer, wine and more. The meal unfolds in the theater, and the film begins shortly after. Tickets are $35 for general admission which includes it all. Add a signed cookbook for $20 more. Tickets are available for purchase here through O Cinema’s website. So there’s only one question left. Are you coming?

*WARNING* – This film contain graphic depictions of sexuality to a degree unprecedented in a mainstream feature film.